Walter Koenig, Chekov on ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 90

Another member of the original Star Trek cast has died, just a few weeks after the franchise celebrated the 60th anniversary of its debut on television.

Walter Koenig, best known as Ensign Chekov on Star Trek television shows and movies, has passed away. He was 90 years old.

He death was confirmed by his representatives, who shared this statement…

Today we mourn the passing of Walter Koenig, whose talent, warmth, and unforgettable performances left a lasting mark on generations of fans around the world. He passed of old age at home in North Hollywood last night surrounded by his daughter and niece.

Koenig was born in Chicago, and then studied psychology college, where a professor encouraged him to try acting. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry actually cast Koenig in a role in his earlier TV series The Lieutenant. He joined the cast of Star Trek as Ensign Pavel Chekov at the start of the show’s second season, where his youthful looks and resemblance to Davy Jones of the Monkees helped him in the land the role, supposedly because Roddenberry was hoping to diversify the cast to appeal to more young viewers.

Although he wasn’t among the initial Star Trek cast, Chekov became a fixture in almost every subsequent production featuring the first crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. (Chekov wasn’t included among the cast of the animated Star Trek series of the 1970s, but Koenig wound up working on the show as a writer instead.) He co-starred in every Star Trek film from 1979’s The Motion Picture to 1994’s Star Trek Generations, which handed off the big-screen Trek franchise from the original stars to the cast of the recently concluded sequel TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

While Koenig was a sturdy presence in all of the Trek films, his most famous and best-remembered moment in the series is surely in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), when the time-displaced Enterprise crew are searching for a way back to the future and Chekov asks the locals for help locating some nuclear vessels — which, in his thick Russian accent, sounds like “nuclear wessels.”

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Outside of Star Trek, Koenig appeared in television series like Ironside, The Questor Tapes, and Babylon 5. He also wrote for the original TV series of Land of the Lost and also penned numerous books, including an autobiography of his life and career, and several comics and graphic novels. And, of course, he was a beloved fixture at Star Trek conventions for decades.

With Koenig’s passing, that leaves just two original Star Trek cast members alive. William Shatner, the Enterprise’s Captain Kirk, is now 95 years old, while George Takei (AKA Lieutenant Sulu) is 89.